Previous research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected dreaming negatively. We compared 1132 dreams collected with prospective two-week dream diary during the pandemic to 166 dreams collected before the pandemic. We hypothesized that the pandemic would increase the number of threatening events, threats related to diseases, and the severity of threats. We also hypothesized that dreams that include direct references to the pandemic will include more threatening events, more disease-related threats, and more severe threats. In contradiction with our hypotheses, results showed no differences between pandemic and pre-pandemic samples in the number of threats, threats related to diseases, or severe threats. However, dreams with direct references to the pandemic had more threats, disease-related threats, and severe threats. Our results thus do not suggest a significant overall increase in nightmarish or threatening dream content during the pandemic but show a more profound effect on a minority of dreams.

中文翻译：

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梦中的病毒模拟：COVID-19 大流行对芬兰日记梦样本中威胁性梦内容的影响

先前的研究表明，COVID-19 大流行对做梦产生了负面影响。我们将大流行期间通过未来两周梦日记收集的 1132 个梦与大流行前收集的 166 个梦进行了比较。我们假设大流行会增加威胁事件的数量、与疾病相关的威胁以及威胁的严重程度。我们还假设，直接提及流行病的梦将包括更多的威胁事件、更多与疾病相关的威胁和更严重的威胁。与我们的假设相矛盾的是，结果显示大流行和大流行前的样本在威胁数量、与疾病相关的威胁或严重威胁方面没有差异。然而，直接涉及流行病的梦有更多的威胁，与疾病相关的威胁和严重的威胁。因此，我们的结果并不表明在大流行期间噩梦或威胁性的梦内容总体上显着增加，但显示出对少数梦的更深远的影响。